Medieval courtier, poet, diplomat, flautist – Oswald von Wolkenstein (c1376-1445) was a Renaissance man a century before the Renaissance properly began. He travelled the world, consorting with popes and potentates and, by his own account, bedding a lot of women along the way. And though he wasn't a professional musician, he thought highly enough of his 130 songs to pay the equivalent of £200,000 to have them preserved in a pair of elaborate, illuminated manuscripts.

Countertenor Andreas Scholl has long been fascinated by Oswald's musical enigma, and has devised a quasi-theatrical show that is part recital, part multimedia biography of this silver-tongued, one-eyed, sexual conquistador.

The rudimentary notation Oswald employed shows no evidence that his songs were intended to be sung in a falsetto register – yet there is nothing androgynous about Scholl's soaring, virile tone. To prove it, he sang a couple of the numbers in his rich natural baritone – and the anthology of bird sounds he produced in the poem celebrating the month of May suggested he could sustain a career as a world-class raven if he so desired.

It is not even clear whether Oswald's simple, strophic songs were intended to be accompanied, but the outstanding early music ensemble Shield of Harmony supplied a subtle range of shadings, featuring the haunting moan of a hammered dulcimer and a medieval harp modelled from an example found in Oswald's own collection. The cycle ended on a plangent note, with the poet ruing the excesses of his career as a party animal: "I, Wolkenstein, have perhaps not lived so wisely in my time." It is to Scholl's great credit that he has enabled him to live on into ours.